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Running Windows 8 in a Virtual Machine

The advantages of using virtualization, and specifically VirtualBox, to develop on the Windows 8 platform.

Developer Recommendations from BUILD

Joe Kunk sifts through the Windows 8 announcements at BUILD and offers advice on next steps.

Work Item Customization: Working With Global Lists

How to use global lists in work item type definitions.

Insider: Facilitating SOA

Peter Vogel describes why he doesn't design service-oriented architectures for his clients: he "facilitates" them.

It's Beautiful, But is it Sustainable?

Software, even the most beautiful software, needs to be developed with an eye toward those who will be maintaining it in the future.

Updates in Entity Framework

A primer on how to update objects, including adds and deletes, in the Entity Framework.

Windows Runtime and .NET: Better Together

The new Windows Runtime integrates beautifully with the .NET Framework. Building this app will demonstrate just how well.

Understanding LINQ to SQL on Windows Phone 7.5

The "Mango" update to Windows Phone 7 includes LINQ to SQL abilities. Use them while building a movie review app.

WebSockets for Faster, More Scalable Ajax Applications

If you want to call a service you can—but the service can't call you back. WebSockets offers the potential for real, two way communications -- and it's as simple as calling a Web Service.

Chocolatey Goodness: A Sweet Installer

Chocolatey is a powerful installation program for open-source software.

Using MEF to Retrieve Connection Strings

Rather than try to ensure that he's getting the right config file for his production and test systems, Peter Vogel lets the application configure itself, using the Managed Extensibility Framework to enable automatic selection of the right connection string

A CLR Alternative to the SQL Server ISNUMERIC function

CLR functions that perform string manipulation and substring extraction perform very well in SQL Server.

Using the Form View with Any Data Collection

The ASP.NET DataViews are powerful tools when coupled with a DataSource. But you can skip the DataSource and use the DataViews to handle displaying and updating any collection of objects you want, with a few lines of code.

MVVM in 5 Minutes

Learn MVVM fundamentals by building this simple Twitter app.

The Key of F#: 3 Questions with F# Creator Don Syme

Why was F# invented? What are its best -- and worst -- uses?

WPF and Inversion of Control

Use Inversion of Control to decouple views and viewmodels in WPF.

To Think in LINQ

If you start "thinking in LINQ" you'll get more done with less code, and what you write will be simpler than using SQL.

HTML5 Rages On

Visual Studio readers sound off on HTML5; some love it, others, well...

The Spaghetti Code Incident

Henry was the TAXCALC king. But his coding skills were positively peasant-like.

Can SQL Server Punch Through the Clouds to No. 1?

SQL Azure has become a major pillar in Microsoft's cloud-based strategy.

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